2 Chronicles 6:18 · World English Bible
But will God indeed dwell with men on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens can’t contain you; how much less this house which I have built!
A king who has just built a magnificent house stands in it and admits it cannot hold the One it was built for, since the highest heavens are too small a cup for that ocean. The danger in any fine work is the swell of pride that thinks the achievement has captured God.
From the Sufism reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
SUFISM
A king who has just built a magnificent house stands in it and admits it cannot hold the One it was built for, since the highest heavens are too small a cup for that ocean. The danger in any fine work is the swell of pride that thinks the achievement has captured God. Here the builder catches himself and bows instead.
The cure is that honest smallness, offering the work while confessing it can never contain the guest. God is present as the vastness no house measures, choosing nonetheless to meet the humble heart inside the very walls it raised.
Sufism lens
Have you started bowing to something you made instead of the one you made it for?
The way is a bowl that is never filled, deeper than anything poured into it. No vessel measures it, and the one who knows that stops trying.
The teaching says what fills the whole sky also dwells in the small space within the heart. The vast one is met in the smallest room, not because the room is big but because it is open.
Marcus Aurelius told himself not to be dazzled by what his own hands had made, since it all belonged to a far larger order. Do the work, then set it back where it came from.
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Sufism